Book Review: The Motorcyclist

The Queen doesn’t read.

That is why she hasn’t read The Motorcyclist, by George Elliott Clarke.  Halifax is the novel’s backdrop and we will assume the Queen knows that Halifax is the capital city of Nova Scotia, one of Canada’s ten provinces.

There is no doubt she has a couple of in-house libraries here and there, but not one book about authors of her empire.  Sorry.  Calling it the British empire is verboten, to borrow a German word. The polite word is Commonwealth now.  English is the commonality.

Therefore, it is in the Queen’s best interest to read The Motorcyclist because the author pinches, pokes and prods her language.  “New Brunswick is a realm of saints – St. Andrews by-the-Sea, Saint John, St. Stephen – all along the Fundy coast.  Too bad the saints be impotent and the Devil vigorous.”  Page 131.

It is also loaded with British history including men who died in her wars while being called ‘niggers’.  Carl, the main character works for Canadian National Railway (CNR). “Carl’s work shift – a long four hours – just drags.  Too many sheets to launder, too many suitcases to tote.”  Page 16.

Halifax is a segregated city like all cities where the Red Coats and missionaries landed, wrestled land from owners and forced them into slavery for silver and brass coins with the Queen’s head. 

British history fuels the novel as Carl weaves Liz 11, his BMW bike past the harbour, residential places zoned on racial lines, women who work mainly as maids, men as train porters and British West Indians (B.W.I.) from countries like Barbados who have come to study in Halifax, with the hidden agenda to marry Coloured Scotianers and become Canadian citizens.

Carl bypasses his colonized and Coloured status when he mounts his bike.  You can visualize the whole routine of getting ready, thanks to the descriptive language.  In fact, the whole book reads like ‘boxing and ballet’ to borrow the author’s words.

The ballet part is his relationship with Muriel Dixon and Marina White, and his love for Miles Davis and everything jazz.  Carl is a Grade 10 drop-out, but he reads Simone de Beauvoir and other books that are compulsory in college English Lit and Women’s Studies. Readers will miss some great lines if there is paucity of knowledge in these two areas.  I did.

It’s a macho book, one that allows a man temporary refuge from social and racial pigeonholes. “The machine is lean power; Carl is now bluntly male.  Buffed.  Not to be re-buffed.” Page 11.

The two women don’t have a choice.  Muriel Dixon accepts the menial jobs and also gives Carl access.  Marina White denies him access because she doesn’t want pregnancies foiling her plans to vault over the restrictions imposed by her race.  That is why she is studying nursing at Dalhousie University.

This review doesn’t do the book justice because it is wide and varied, like Canada itself, not limiting like this book sampling.  The writing is like an aloe laced with thorns, smooth like papaya with only the seeds to spit out, sweet but stringy like mango or leaves sores on the tongue like fresh pineapple.

By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.